As you will know, Linda and I are very keen birdwatchers: I document our days (and nights!) in the field with photographs. I have a couple of good DSLR cameras and two excellent lenses which have allowed me to build up a pretty good record of the wildlife of the region around our home. (If you're interested, here's my daily blog: http://birdsoftheheath.blogspot.co.uk/ )
During May, 2014, I was given a tip-off that a Spotted Crake (a rare Summer visitor) was calling at night from the reedbeds at Strumpshaw Fen RSPB reserve. Linda & I accordingly took a flask and cameras to a small wooden hide in the heart of the reserve and waited until dusk to see if we could hear the strange whiplash call of this nocturnal bird. (In the event, we didn't! It had presumably departed the previous evening!)
As the night grew dark, we became aware of a triangular formation of lights - red, green and white - moving backward and forward along the south-western horizon. These lights were 'chasing' each other around a brighter central white light. More in hope than expectation, I took a picture which, enhanced for brightness, shows the object and a Marsh Harrier!
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Having walked back to the
car, we decided to drive round to the riverside village of Brundall to
see if we could hear the Crake from the other side of the reedbeds: our
informant had told me he had plainly heard the call from his garden! As
we drove towards the river, we were brought to a halt by the barriers
of the level crossing at Brundall Station. Linda suddenly noticed a cluster
of bright lights hovering above us: I jumped out of the car with my camera
and took several photos, of which these are the best:
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The object darted around for several seconds before racing off across the yacht basin towards the river. We conjectured that a possible identification would be one of the increasingly-available high performance surveillance drones: but looking online, we couldn't find any of a triangular shape....
